Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 433 posts

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#231

Post by magicalist »

dragonwriter wrote: post #203
emilecantin wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Judge Alsup (the original judge, and the only person in this whole shit-show who knows anything about programming) ruled against this, as he determined that there were only so many ways to write a range-checking function. He said it was entirely plausible that the Google developer would have come up with the exact same function independently.

> IIRC Judge Alsup (the original judge, and the only person in this whole shit-show who knows anything about programming) ruled against this, as he determined that there were only so many ways to write a range-checking function. No, it was found to be a copyright infringement in the first trial; it's one point on which Oracle sought to have the district court upheld and Google sought to have it overturned in the orig…

> No, it was found to be a copyright infringement in the first trial

I believe GP is correct. The jury found it to be infringement, but then Alsup ruled it wasn't copyrightable in the first place, so the jury's finding was irrelevant.

edit: oops, sorry, didn't realize the rangeCheck scope of this subthread

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#233

Post by jcranmer »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #214
jcranmer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Google won both the jury trials (first on not violating copyright, and then on the violation being fair use after the first was overturned on CAFC). In other words, Google won on most or all of its arguments at the jury trial level, and CAFC kept overturning all of its arguments. The sentiment I'm getting from the oral arguments is that SCOTUS is leaning much more towards "CAFC is off its rocker" here.

Wait, you have access to the oral arguments? Source?

Oral arguments are happening via teleconference as a result of coronavirus, so they've been streamed live by C-SPAN.

You can find the replay here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri...

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#234

Post by dragonwriter »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #214
jcranmer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Google won both the jury trials (first on not violating copyright, and then on the violation being fair use after the first was overturned on CAFC). In other words, Google won on most or all of its arguments at the jury trial level, and CAFC kept overturning all of its arguments. The sentiment I'm getting from the oral arguments is that SCOTUS is leaning much more towards "CAFC is off its rocker" here.

Wait, you have access to the oral arguments? Source?

> Wait, you have access to the oral arguments?

Don't need oral arguments for the results of the first trial and the arguments filed in the appeal of that first trial.

Here's the final judgement from the first trial: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1211.pdf

Note on the second page:

> With respect to Oracle’s claim for relief for copyright infringement, judgment is entered in favor of Google and against Oracle except as follows: the rangeCheck code in TimSort.java and ComparableTimSort.java, and the eight decompiled files (seven “Impl.java” files and one “ACL” file),

And here's Oracle’s reply brief in the appeal; the relevant part on this issue is under the heading THERE IS NO “DE MINIMIS” DEFENSE TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.

http://www.groklaw.net/pdf4/OraGoogleAppeal-134.pdf

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#235

Post by pankajdoharey »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #134
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Oracle ultimately wins, it seems like millions of programmers will have to reach for a thesaurus to find synonyms to name functions. We'll have to waste brain cycles coming up and alternative spellings of methods to stay away from copyright infringement. It's worse than that isn't it? Naming is how you link things. What happens to WINE if it is illegal to use the same names Kernel32 does?

It's bad for programmers everywhere. If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source. You couldn't make a third-party implementation of a corporate-owned programming language without putting yourself at risk. Imagine you're a company using some Oracle database, and you want to reimplement some component of that system in order to migrate and escape their vendor lock-in…

Let us assume for a moment Oracle wins this so what? Android will become illegal and then Oracle would ask Google to do what? Pay royalties? Pay Damages? Ask all the android programmers in the world to stop using Android ? Abandon android runtime? I think what is gonna happen realistically is capitalism will take over they will settle it among themselves and share user data as a bargain probably get some royalties. The worst that can happen is Google will abandon android runtime or transfer the development to Oracle. Either way nothing much is gonna happen. Android has already won now say from tomorrow Oracle develops and owns the android development toolchain, so what, from a programmers perspective nothing much.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#236

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #214
jcranmer wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Google won both the jury trials (first on not violating copyright, and then on the violation being fair use after the first was overturned on CAFC). In other words, Google won on most or all of its arguments at the jury trial level, and CAFC kept overturning all of its arguments. The sentiment I'm getting from the oral arguments is that SCOTUS is leaning much more towards "CAFC is off its rocker" here.

Wait, you have access to the oral arguments? Source?

[deleted]

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#237

Post by dragonwriter »

magicalist wrote: post #231
dragonwriter wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IIRC Judge Alsup (the original judge, and the only person in this whole shit-show who knows anything about programming) ruled against this, as he determined that there were only so many ways to write a range-checking function. No, it was found to be a copyright infringement in the first trial; it's one point on which Oracle sought to have the district court upheld and Google sought to have it overturned in the orig…

> No, it was found to be a copyright infringement in the first trial I believe GP is correct. The jury found it to be infringement, but then Alsup ruled it wasn't copyrightable in the first place, so the jury's finding was irrelevant. edit: oops, sorry, didn't realize the rangeCheck scope of this subthread

> The jury found it to be infringement, but then Alsup ruled it wasn't copyrightable in the first place, so the jury's finding was irrelevant.

No, the final judgement in the first trial by Alsup found the APIs weren't copyrightable, but that the literal copying of rangeCheck and some other compiled files was infringement. (For which no damages were awarded, by stipulation of the parties, I think because everyone was planning to appeal everything and didn't really want to wait for damage calculations to get that ball rolling.)

It's a short ruling: http://www.groklaw.net/pdf3/OraGoogle-1211.pdf

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#238

Post by jayd16 »

treis wrote: post #230
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From everything I've read, Wine would quite clearly be illegal if the court rules in favor of Oracle. I am very worried about this case.

Wine makes programs written for Windows work on Linux. The key difference is that Linux is an independently developed system. The extent that wine copies Windows code is limited to a compatability layer. It doesn't transform Linux into just a copy of Windows. In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there.…

Didn't they though? They've had their own vm and bytecode for as long as Android has been released. The use of Java is for making libraries compatible.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#239

Post by treis »

jayd16 wrote: post #238
treis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine makes programs written for Windows work on Linux. The key difference is that Linux is an independently developed system. The extent that wine copies Windows code is limited to a compatability layer. It doesn't transform Linux into just a copy of Windows. In contrast, Google didn't have their own independently developed programming language. They needed one so they copied the Java api and created one from there.…

Didn't they though? They've had their own vm and bytecode for as long as Android has been released. The use of Java is for making libraries compatible.

They did have their own vm and byte code but not a programming language.

Re: Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

#240

Post by CobrastanJorji »

pankajdoharey wrote: post #235
tachyonbeam wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad for programmers everywhere. If Oracle wins, you couldn't reimplement a compatible version of anything that's not open source. You couldn't make a third-party implementation of a corporate-owned programming language without putting yourself at risk. Imagine you're a company using some Oracle database, and you want to reimplement some component of that system in order to migrate and escape their vendor lock-in…

Let us assume for a moment Oracle wins this so what? Android will become illegal and then Oracle would ask Google to do what? Pay royalties? Pay Damages? Ask all the android programmers in the world to stop using Android ? Abandon android runtime? I think what is gonna happen realistically is capitalism will take over they will settle it among themselves and share user data as a bargain probably get some royalties. T…

Nothing much? This isn't just about the Java API. This is about EVERY API. You might not be able to write a web server anymore, depending on who owns the copyright for HTTP. You didn't invent GET, PUT, and POST, you thieving copyright abuser.
Post reply on HN